He appears is sentenced to eight months home detention on drugs and threatening to kill charges.

As the judge dressed Phil Rudd down, perhaps his most stinging rebuke was that the former AC/DC drummer's playing wasn't anything special.

Rudd was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court on Thursday to eight months home detention on drugs and threatening to kill charges.

Rudd appeared in front of Judge Thomas Ingram for sentencing after pleading guilty to possession of cannabis and methamphetamine and one charge of threatening to kill. He has been on bail the whole time.

The judge warned Rudd he would go to prison if he breached the terms of his sentence.

It was revealed in November last year that Rudd had been arrested and charged with drugs offences and attempting to procure a murder, a charge that was dropped 24 hours later.

In April, when Rudd pleaded guilty to possessing drugs and threatening to kill, the court heard he'd made a call to an associate asking him to "take out" a former security guard turned personal assistant after becoming angry when his solo album launch in August last year flopped.

He fired a number of employees, including his victim.

On September 25 at 8.12pm Rudd phoned an associate in Australia saying he wanted the victim "taken out", and "taken care of because they were a bunch of f***en c****.

Rudd then offered the associate $200,000, one of his cars, a motorbike or a house, which the associate believed was payment for the request.

The next day at 8.27am, Rudd called the victim and asked if he was "on today", the victim said yes at which point Rudd said "I'm going to come over and kill you".

Rudd made two further calls to the same victim, who hung up after realising it was Rudd.

Police then obtained a warrant to search Rudd's Bureta home in Tauranga on November 6.

When police arrived Rudd was in the lounge and attempted to conceal a container of crumbs, which after testing was found to be 6gms of cannabis.

Rudd then pulled out a bag of cannabis from the couch, the court was told.

ESR testing found the bag contained a further 20.2gms of cannabis.

When police arrived at the home Rudd was wearing jeans and no shirt. In his front jeans pocket police discovered a white powder, which turned out to be 0.273gms of methamphetamine.

Police searched the home where they found 0.205g of methamphetamine in the master bedroom, 47.2gms of cannabis in the hallway cupboard, and a further 17.9gms of cannabis in the pool room bedroom.

A total of 0.478gms of methamphetamine and 91gms of cannabis was found.